A solution to network protocol issues for directional ad-hoc networks through topology control and a multiple-radio-per-node architecture

Line of Sight (LOS) communications and mobile networking are important capabilities for future military operations. Central to this idea is the desire for increased bandwidth and the ability to operate in the absence of satellite-based communications. A key concept in tactical edge wireless networks and airborne backhaul networks is the use of directional antennas to boost the performance of radio systems. As most current radio and wireless networking protocols were designed for omni-directional and/or fixed infrastructure environments, the use of directional antennas introduces disrupting side effects in many protocol layers of a networking system. Solving these issues is the topic of much current academic research. In this paper we describe a Multiple-Radio-per-node Architecture (MRA) that eliminates most of these problems. That is, our solution involves making changes to the architecture of a wireless node as an alternative to making changes to the design of network protocol layers. As a result, our architecture makes it possible to immediately build fully directional mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) using a wide range of radios without requiring major modification to the radio or existing protocols. Instead, the focus is on building a system of controllers that understand the capabilities of a given radio and implement appropriate discovery, tracking, and topology control algorithms.